


Sprezzatura; or, A Venetian Entertainment

by MercuryGray



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV), All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: (sort of if you squint), Dinner Party, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Protective Older Brothers, Renaissance Era, Sibling Rivalry, Venezia | Venice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22803526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: Baldwin takes a break from his growing business interests, and his responsibilities with the Congregation, to entertain his brother Godfrey on a visit to Venice.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Sprezzatura; or, A Venetian Entertainment

**Author's Note:**

> I have found quite a universal rule which in this matter seems to me valid above all other...to avoid affectation in every way possible as though it were some rough and dangerous reef; and (to pronounce a new word perhaps) to practice in all things a certain _sprezzatura,_ so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it. - Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 1528

It was already dark, and they were going to be late.

“Will you stop fussing and come down already?” Baldwin de Clermont roared. “We were expected an hour ago!”

“You said you didn’t want to bring a scarecrow,” his brother shot back from upstairs. “That I would bring shame on the house of Chiaramonti.” Godfrey emerged, finally, his golden hair now perfectly brushed, the blue velvet doublet he was borrowing shining in the candlelight as he took the stairs two at a time, Baldwin practically steaming with impatience at the bottom of the stairs. It was, indeed, a far cry from the travel-stained vampire who’d come galloping in that afternoon chapped from the sun and wearing a weeks’ worth of beard - but then, with Godfrey’s Germanic good looks he probably could have come as he’d been and the ladies still would have loved him. His brother had that effect on humans. “Well, come on. I was promised pretty girls and I mean to get them.”

“I promised nothing of the kind, brother,” Baldwin cautioned, stepping into his barge and settling his hat a little firmer upon his head. “These people are allies - business partners. And their daughters are not for tupping up the nearest wall - or for feeding. If you want that I’ve the name of a brothel near the Rialto." 

"You were much more fun before Papa put you on the Congregation, you know,” Godfrey observed, settling back into the boat’s cushions to watch the lights in the buildings along the canal. “A wiff of war in Turkey and we would have been gone -” he snapped his fingers “- like that, and now where are you? Dancing attendance upon the Doge and worrying about the state of our velvets.”

“And you’re the one he sends to see if I need settling in,” Baldwin shot back. “I’m not a child that needs minding, and least of all from you, brother.”

But Godfrey wasn’t finished. “Don’t you miss it?” he asked, sitting up, his hands expressive. “Days in the saddle, the blood on your sword? A different pretty girl in every town, trembling before the Wolf of Gevaudan?”

Baldwin snorted. “Pretty can be bought on any street corner in this city.” _And I can still make women tremble, when I’ve a mind._

It was true, at least a little - he did miss the life his brother laid out. But there was wisdom in what his father said, that trade and finance and the art of diplomacy would someday win more wars than the sword. He hated it - but he saw it, even now, in the houses of the Venetians, in the palace of the Doge - men remarking on the latest on the wars of the Milanese, but in the same breath speaking of the Florentines with their banks and artists. He saw it in his account books, watching the ducats pile up so that he could choose whether other men could go to war - or not. He saw it around the Congregation’s table, as they struggled between them to keep their secrets. No, this was the way of the future, this kind of …patient power. A hard lesson for a warrior, vampire or otherwise, to learn. Instead of buying swords now he was buying silk mills and making friends with merchants. Like the one whose house they were visiting this evening, for instance. 

A young woman was posted inside the door of the de Bonsi palazzo, waiting patiently as the guests arrived, her posture starting to show a little of the boredom that comes from a long guest list and late arrivals. But she brightened a little as she saw who was coming up the stairs, her smile changing to something that felt…warmer, somehow. “Messer Chiaramonti. I’m afraid you’ve missed my father - he’s left me to do the welcoming myself. ”

Baldwin made his best bow, thankful, in a small way, that Guido de Bonsi had many friends that required his attention. “Madonna, thank you for inviting us this evening. I’ve taken the liberty of bringing my brother. ‘Freddo, this is Bartolomea de Bonsi - the daughter of the house.” 

“I was going to be very disappointed if he’d said you were the wife, _madonna_ ,” Godfrey said with one of his disarming smiles, catching Bartolomea’s hand and kissing it, making her blush a little. “If my brother had told me we would be in such pretty company, I might have been minded to get here sooner.”

For some strange reason, his brother’s cavalier attitude made his skin crawl - Bartolomea was not for playing petty games! He knew he shouldn’t have worried - she was used to such, and from much less gallant men than Godfrey, but still, it…bothered him. “Messer Chiaramonti speaks often of his brothers,” Bartolomea said, withdrawing her hand graciously, her smile full of that polite flirtation reserved for one’s father’s business partners. “He never mentioned they were all as handsome as he is.” Godfrey smiled and bowed at the compliment, letting her gesture them into the great room and the rest of the evening’s festivities.

When they were well away Baldwin grabbed his brother’s elbow, hissing in his ear, “ _She_ is _not_ for seducing, ‘Freddo.” _She has more brains than half the first-born sons of this city put together and her father’s business thrives for it._

His brother rolled his eyes and clamped his own hand down on Baldwin’s, pulling him closer in retaliation. “As if I’d try! _She_ called _you_ handsome, you idiot.”

For a moment he lost his grip. “What?” _She did?_

Godfrey shook his brother loose and adjusted the ties on his sleeve, rolling his eyes. “And Papa says you’re the smart one,” he murmured, making a hasty exit towards the banquet table and the wine and leaving Baldwin alone with his thoughts, feeling very much at sea as he looked back and saw that her eyes were still following them, her gaze almost hopeful. He shook it off and went to follow his brother, his present unease not a feeling he was familiar with.

**Author's Note:**

> Castiglione is actually a little early for this drabble, which takes place in the 1470s, but I like the idea of sprezzatura, the studied nonchalance of the courtier, too much to miss using it for a title, because I think so many of Harkness' vampires embody it - the ability, by age and practice, to make everything look graceful and easy. It's something that Baldwin usually excels at - except here! I really like the idea of Baldwin as the kind of merchant prince we see during the Italian Renaissance, so here he’s a contemporary of Lorenzo de’Medici and Galeazzo Sforza, albeit in Venice, not in Florence or Milan, here at the height of Venetian power as a trading hub. Time and time again Baldwin is presented as a banker, but also characterized as a general and a warrior, so I wanted to put him in a time and place where those two things can interconnect a little bit, one profession beginning to bleed into the other. 
> 
> We don’t ever get much about Godfrey de Clermont, except that he collected alchemical manuscripts and that at some point he may have been the family historian and genealogist - like his brothers, I like to think he went through several different skillsets over his long lifetime, and being a warrior (and a courtier) was one of them.
> 
> The Beast of Gevaudan is actually from the 18th century - an enormous wolf who terrorized the countryside near where Sept Tours should be located. I love giving Baldwin menacing nicknames, and this is one of a much longer list.
> 
> The war in Turkey that Godfrey alludes to would have been the one recently ended with the Treaty of Constantinople - an agreement that lost Venice a fair bit of land.
> 
> Bartolomea de Bonsi has showed up in a couple of drabbles on tumblr, including one with Baldwin. Her family are silk merchants - a very lucrative profession in 15th century Venice. She is, as it's alluded here, an almost silent partner in her father's business, and one of the reasons for the de Bonsi family's success, a clever woman with a head for numbers for whom Baldwin has a (grudging, but growing) respect.


End file.
